By Tom Breihan on March 19, 2009 at 2:20 p.m. EDT

Ulrich Schnauss [Elysium; 8 p.m.]First things first: Big gas-face to whoever booked UK-based electro-shoegaze laptop guy Ulrich Schnauss for the 8 p.m. pole-position spot at a SXSW show. Because that, after all, is how you want your four-day beer-blast to start: Watching a guy twiddle knobs and push buttons on his laptop for an hour in a dank bar. It doesn't matter how achingly gorgeous the sounds coming out of that computer might be; this is not a good look.

Schnauss will always suffer in comparison to his closest contemporary, M83, since he doesn't have their pop intuition or sense of sweep. But at Elysium, he hid pretty little synth hooks under his crackling drums. His beats are more disco than M83, and there's some mechanistic J Dilla acid-trails funk in there, too. When two rock dudes with guitars ambled out for the lullaby "Shine", it somehow turned the show even more somnambulant than when it was just Schnauss and his laptop. But later on in the set, Schnauss' sound got clangier, and the two guitar guys came back to blast waves of staticky fuzz over the top. By the end, it was basically Detroit techno with distorted guitar whorls overtop. So yeah, this thing picked up.

Capsula [Habana Bar Backyard; 9 p.m.]A last minute change in schedule meant that when I went to see NY up-and-comer Lissy Trullie at the Red 7 Patio, I ended up staring at some mariachi band instead. From a couple of blocks away, though, I heard something that sounded pretty right on. Turned out it was Capsula, a glammed-up power-trio from Spain playing to a mostly empty Habana Bar backyard. Capsula sounded alternately like straight-up scuzzy garage punk and like Death Valley 69-era Sonic Youth if Kim Gordon sang all their stuff. Pretty good! And I definitely wouldn't have heard them if they weren't playing so loud.

Heartless Bastards [Stubb's; 10 p.m.]

On their phenomenal new The Mountain, Ohio rasp-rockers Heartless Bastards sound something like the unjustly forgotten 1990s blues-punk band Geraldine Fibbers if they decided to suddenly reunite and start sounding like Band of Horses, filtering their weathered snarl through the kind of expansive beauty that makes for a great road-trip soundtrack. Onstage at Stubb's, playing to a massive crowd there for the Decemberists, the band sounded even more assured and powerful. There's a country-punk grit to them that reminds me of Social Distortion, and it comes through stronger when you can see lead Bastard Erika Wennerstrom pushing her voice through hell.

Wennerstrom switches off between piano and guitar onstage, but it's her voice that makes her band something special. On the verses, it's a gnarled mutter, but when she hits those choruses, she turns it into a full-bore howl, one that I've already heard a few people compare to Janis Joplin. And then the band brings riffs that kick hard enough that I don't feel bad making Sabbath/Pentagram/Alice Cooper references. These are lean times for huge, sweeping, meat-and-potatoes trad-rock, but the Heartless Bastards do it exactly right.

Lovvers [Red 7 Patio; 11 p.m.]It's easy to lump British tantrum-throwers Lovvers in with fellow v-abuser Wavves and the cresting wave of tape-hiss pop-noise lo-fi kids. But onstage at the Red 7 Patio, they sounded closer to uber-crude Crypt Records garage-rock. They play fast and sloppy, but they keep a pop-punk sense of abandon, careening around the stage and dipping into the crowd to sing in people's faces. They're not above slipping "Hey! Hey!" chants into the middle of their songs, and they finished their set with a falling-apart cover of the Buzzcocks' "What Do I Get", which made sense. They didn't bring anything as powerful as Heartless Bastards' grandeur, but they were a fun way to spend 20 minutes.

School of Seven Bells [Buffalo Billiards; 12 a.m.]Here's what Brooklyn dream-poppers School of Seven Bells brought onstage with them: Two guitars, one keyboard, one chair covered in electronic whatsits. No drums. I figured this might be a problem. On!Air!Library!, the previous band from twin-sister singers Claudia and Alejandra Deheza, had some gorgeous moments, but they also tended to err on the formless side. But ex-Secret Machine Benjamin Curtis' drum machines sounded great, adding backbone to the tracks that isn't always there on Alpinisms, their debut. And the Deheza sisters didn't push their angelic harmonies into Cocteau Twin curlicues. They sang serenely but directly, lending an almost matter-of-fact tone to their voices. That forthright quality, combined with the glimmers of 80s synth-pop underlying their best songs, served the band well. They could rely on the otherworldly quality of the vocals, but they do something more difficult: They make catchy songs, which makes them an anomaly in the universe of whatever's passing for dream-pop these days.

Themselves [Mohawk; 1 a.m.]I left School of Seven Bells a bit early so I could hike up to the Mohawk and catch one of the first sets from the reunited art-rap duo Themselves. When I got there, though, what I saw was Themselves' Anticon buddy Buck 65 wearing a cowboy shirt and rapping over Laid Back's creepy disco classic "White Horse". So, uh, that happened.

Themselves, the duo of Jel and Doseone, have been on hiatus for six years but they've been working together in the prog-pop/rap band Subtle that whole time. But evidently there's some serious pent-up demand for new Themselves material. They emerged to an absolutely rapturous reception, and a few drunks off to the side even spent the whole set dancing, not something I ever expected to see at an anticon show. (It was absolutely horrendous dancing, but still.)

The duo's new guest-heavy the FREEHoudini mixtape comes jammed with mysterious quicksilver sing-raps; it reminds me a bit of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. (A compliment!) Onstage, though, they're even weirder. Doseone (who has a mohawk now) raps so quickly that he can sound like a CD skipping, and it's basically impossible to understand almost any word that comes through his pinched cartoon-character bleat. It's truly impressive watching him pull this stuff off live and seeing Jel program his beats live, playing hypeman the whole time. But Dose lays that whole I'm-a-weirdo shtick on a little thick: throwing fake flowers everywhere, squinching up his face like Ernest P. Worrell, saying ridiculous stuff ("Tell major label rappers to quit, especially Murs") without elaborating. Themselves' off-kilter skronk isn't for everyone, but it definitely made a club full of slaphappy festival-goers happy tonight.

+ Cutesy London guy-girl duo Psapp have even more TV-ready tunes (see: "Grey's Anatomy" theme song) on their third LP, The Camel's Back, which will get a Stateside release February 17 on Domino. The twosome are celebrating with a European tour, check the dates here.

+ Led by the genuinely Joplin-style crooning of frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom, Ohio's Heartless Bastards ready their third album, The Mountain, for a February 3 release on Fat Possum. The record is preceded by a single, also called "The Mountain", which is streaming at your local MySpace right now. Their extensive upcoming U.S. tour will see them play dates with the Black Keys, Andrew Bird, and Gaslight Anthem.